Lite Bite

When conditions are rough or the weather doesn’t cooperate, sheepshead can save the day.

Sheepshead weren’t our primary target that morning, but when the conditions changed, they were a welcome substitute for the red drum we had initially planned to pursue.I made the early morning trip to Harbourgate Marina at Cherry Grove (North Myrtle Beach) because Capt. Mark Dickson of Shallow Minded Charters (843-280-7099) had offered a trip for some large red drum. He’d found a pretty good bite of 30- to 45-inch reds for more than a week.

An invitation from Dickson, a veteran and good angler, meant a hastily-rearranged schedule to enjoy this type of action.

Unfortunately the sting of an arriving cool front didn’t offer much good fortune. And, when the sun broke over the horizon and the tree tops could be seen swaying in a stiffening breeze, prospects looked even dimmer.

The tide was nearly low and the breeze was mild at the protected marina. Dickson already had the rods in their holders and the Mercury Verado on his Triton LTS was idling so quietly I wouldn’t have known it was running except for the telltale stream of cooling water shooting out the side.

“I guess we’re going,” I said. “You don’t think this front and breeze will hurt them?”

“I’m afraid it might, but I hope not,” Dickson said. “If it does, I’ve got something else in mind. I can’t let you get up this early and drive down here without catching something, now can I?”

From Harbourgate Marina, we motored a few miles north on the Intracoastal Waterway to the intersection where Calabash Creek heads inland into North Carolina and the Little River Inlet Channel heads out to Little River Inlet and turned right toward the inlet.

“You’re almost back in North Carolina here,” Dickson said. “That is Calabash (pointing to the town up the creek on our left) and you only have to go a couple of hundred yards up this creek before you cross into North Carolina. The state line comes through here at an angle and runs just east of the channel all the way to the inlet. We’ll be fishing in South Carolina this morning but only by about a hundred yards or so.”

As we swung around the first bend in the Little River Inlet Channel, Dickson asked me to run the boat for him to cast net some mullet minnows. They were running through the inlet pretty consistently, and it took a few casts to load up the boat’s livewell.

Swinging into the channel between the inlet jetties, Dickson observed a little swell, and he said he would try to not get me wet. He expertly eased out the western side of the cut then turned across the inlet offshore and east of the eastern jetty.

“This is where we’ll be fishing,” he said. “There’s a small slough that runs through here, and the drum will hold in it, waiting for something to wash by in the tide.”

He slipped a mullet minnow on the hook of his drum rig. The rig was attached to a 7-foot medium-heavy Star Stellar Lite rod and Shimano spinning reel he passed to me and directed me to flip it just behind the boat and let out just enough line so I could feel the sinker bumping along the bottom as we drifted.

I can’t say the drum started attacking our baits immediately. The sea wasn’t too bad, but the cold front had put the skids on the drum bite and given the fish lockjaw.

We worked the area through the last of the falling tide and through the slack before it started rising again, A while into the rising tide we accepted that the spot-tails weren’t going to cooperate. All we had to show for our effort was a small nurse shark.

“Well, we gave it a good try, but this front has shut them down,” Dickson said at mid morning. “Plan B is sheepshead.

“They’re pretty consistent here along the jetty, and I go about catching them slightly different than most folks. What do you say? Would you like to give sheepshead a try?”

I responded in the affirmative; I’ve caught sheepshead from time to time but never have been what one would call an expert. But Dickson is an expert, so I wanted to learn his techniques and take home a tasty sheepshead or two for dinner.

“Yep, count me in,” I said. “It sounds like fun.”

We stowed the rods and eased back around the jetty and into the inlet channel. I thought we were heading to the marshes to catch some sand fiddlers for baits, but that was not the case.

Near the inshore end of the western jetty there was a small section of sand beach. Dickson eased us onto it and dropped anchor. Just as I was about to ask if we would be walking the jetty or surf fishing for the sheepshead, he pulled a couple of small buckets and scrapers out of a storage box and said we’d walk to the jetty and collect some barnacles and mussels for bait.

The barnacles and mussels were growing on the jetty in mats. It resembled the backing on carpet but had lots of small shells in the mix. Using a scraper, Dickson lifted broad swatches of the fungi and mussels from the flat surfaces of several rocks at the jetty.

“This stuff grows along much of the jetty,” Dickson said. “It seems to do better in locations where it is out of the water at lower tides and submerged during the higher stages of the tide. The sheepshead move in to feed on it as the tide rises. We just put chunks of it on the hook and ease it back to the jetty for the sheepshead to eat.”

After gathering most of a bucket of mussel mat, we returned to the boat and passed through the inlet and back to the outside of the east jetty, but this time we were closer to the jetty and farther inshore.

While tying a 20-ounce bank sinker to a piece of heavy twine, Dickson shifted the motor into neutral and judged the drift. The waves moved us a little, but we were at the protected side of the jetty; we experienced only gentle rises and falls.

When Dickson was satisfied he’d figured out how the drift would move us, he moved just off of the jetty and dropped anchor. Once the anchor held, he let out line until we were near the jetty. Next he moved to the stern and heaved the bank sinker into the rocks of the jetty. The small weight fell through the cracks in the jetty and quickly hung solid. With the sinker firmly locked, Dickson pulled on the small twine and adjusted it to set the boat up parallel to the jetty so we could fish easily.

Seeing the puzzled look on my face, he answered my question, without my having to ask.

“I don’t know exactly where I got that idea,” he said. “It may have been from my dad or my brother, but it works pretty well to set us up where we can fish. When we get ready to go, I just use the motor to break the line and the twine is soft enough it doesn’t snap back like mono.

For the sheepshead, we switched to slightly lighter Star rods and Shimano reels spinning outfits, filled with 12-pound-test Stren Super Braid. The rig was an 18-inch piece of 15-pound mono fluorocarbon leader, with a Size 4 Eagle Claw Series 42 hook and a 3/16 -ounce split shot 6 to 8 inches above the hook. We cut the mussel mat into strips and chunks about 1×2 inches and put them on the hooks.

“See that sort of square looking rock right there?” Dickson said, pointing to a section of the jetty right off our side. “The jetty drops straight down right there, and you need to cast as close to it as you can and let your bait bounce along it with the current. The bite will be very light, but with the braided line you should be able to tell the difference between a bump on the rock and a bite.”

Casting toward the inshore edge of the square rock, I dropped my bait within a couple of inches of it.

“That should be good,” Dickson said as he placed his bait similarly towards the offshore end of the rock. “Now just let it sink until you feel a little peck or twitch.”

Noticing me tense up, Dickson said: “Did you think you just felt something?”

When I replied in the affirmative, he said: “You’ve probably already lost your bait. This stuff doesn’t stay on the hook the best, but it’s crunchy, and you usually feel them better than with sand fiddlers. If it doesn’t come back pretty quickly, you’re fishing on credit and need to rebait.”

Sure enough, when I wound my line up a minute later the bait was gone. Dickson handed me another piece of the mussel mat and suggested I cast to the same place.

My cast wasn’t exact, but I was pretty close and let my bait drift down in the current. This time when I felt the little tic as it stopped moving, I leaned back and tried to set the hook. Somebody was home this time and still had the bait in his mouth.

The sting of the hook driven home caused the fish to erupt in a frenzy. It surged against the line then ran a few feet right before reversing and surging a few feet to the left, all the while struggling against the line and pumping a strong pulse through the rod.

“Oh yeah, that’s what we’re here for,” Dickson said excitedly. “Be careful and don’t let him get you back in the rocks. There are enough jagged edges in there, he will break you off immediately if he rubs the line across it with that much strain.”

His words were prophetic as the fish gave one last mighty surge and I felt the line scrape briefly before it went limp.

“Hand me a hook and some leader, and I’ll tie this back together,” I said. “You can keep your bait in the water and see if another hungry fish is around.”

Just as I finished tying on my hook and was reaching for another piece of bait, Dickson reared back and was rewarded with a deeply-bent rod. His fish did the same two-step, while continually pulsing the rod. Finally the stripes of the “convict fish” became visible a few feet below the surface. I dropped my rod and grabbed the net to be ready to corral the fish and hoist it into the boat.

Another few feet higher and I slipped the net under the fish as Dickson led it into the net, and I hoisted it into the boat.

We admired the fish and its healthy dentures.

“Many folks say these teeth look almost human,” Dickson said. “I guess they have to be pretty tough to crack barnacles and scrape mussels off the rocks.”

“Yeah, they’re tough all right, but right now we’re tougher,” I said. “Let’s get our lines back in the water and catch a good mess of them for supper.”

As the tide rose, we caught a few more sheepshead and quit by early afternoon. All of them had the same “click” for a bite, and the few we hooked struggled all the way to the net.

When we decided to leave, Dickson gave a strong tug on the twine to the sinker and it broke. Then he eased over and pulled the anchor.

As we sung out from the jetty, Dickson once again read my mind as he pointed to the end of the jetty.

“See that white pole on top of the dunes in by the end of the jetty?” he said. “That’s the marker for the state line. It’s right up near the end of the jetty there and several hundred yards over out here.

“You never quite got back to North Carolina, but you were close all day. We have a lot of folks from Calabash, Sunset Beach, Ocean Isle and Shallotte fish out here with us regularly.”

“I’m sure that’s so,” I said. “Even though the drum weren’t feeding, I’ve had a good time.

“I expect you’ll begin seeing me out here occasionally.”

Even while saying this I was wondering how quickly I could return and sample the good fishing just out of North Carolina and Little River Inlet.